Rabiot’s rage: France’s unsuspected hero

France entered the Cup as the unluckiest of all the favourites. A wave of injuries left out Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kanté, Presnel Kimpembe, Christopher Nkunku and, finally, Karim Benzema, the current Ballon d’Or. If one of the virtues of this squad was the diversity of its possible summons, chance soon put it to the test. And boy has it come out graceful.

Australia’s early goal quickly tensed the game and promoted the idea of ​​a Tuesday of surprises, as suggested by Argentina’s early loss to the Saudis.

Long pass, oriented control (Lucas Hernández’s injury), close cross, Pavard does not reach the end and the kangaroos bill. Rarely has the effectiveness been so Australian, which produced a strange relief for the Peruvian fans: at least these are the ones who eliminated us.

The balm didn’t last long. France cleared up all doubt and within half an hour had turned the game around. On the one hand, it is the typical problem of the small team that scores early for the big one: the game gets longer and longer, the minutes seem endless. It is very difficult to have the only way to grit your teeth and endure. On the other, the blues understood that the early goal was also an option to wake up. What remained pending was to know who would be the executors of the reaction. And it was there that Adrien Rabiot began to shine.

World Cups have unsuspected heroes and Rabiot is one of them. He missed Russia 2018 due to an overabundance of talent and went from PSG to Juventus without fanfare or fuss. Now, faced with the forced casualties, he obtained the title and responded first with a headed goal and then with a play of character: he forced the recovery up front and assisted Giroud for the second. In the last 45 he made an ex officio display: he managed times, distributed, marked, overflowed, centered. The classic virtues expected in a mature midfielder, in command. It will undoubtedly be the first revalued token of the Qatari experience.

We would be wrong, however, to reduce the French triumph to an individual issue. Deschamps has forged a hard-working team in which stars are forced to sweat for a spot. In terms of deployment, Griezmann is the paradigmatic case, but with him Giroud, the Hernández, Tchuaméni, Dembélé and even Mbappé. The synchronous movements create the idea of ​​a stony team, with very close and defined lines, but at the same time they make the attack inevitable, where they have, even diminished, two fantastic scorers: the all-time scorer for their team and who may be today the best striker in the world If it is with overflows or centers it matters little. Deschamps does not like fantasy, but forcefulness. Those who remember him as a player understand why.

Faced with this, the Australians began to blur and showed cracks, let’s say, the weaknesses that Peru failed to identify in the playoffs. The Mooy-Irvine duo was continually outplayed, the full-backs were unable to stop the feints from the extremes of PSG and Barcelona, ​​the passes between the lines were more and more repeated; In summary, the Gauls managed to create more than 20 scoring situations that put the good goalkeeper Ryan in trouble, who sometimes responded with success and others with resignation. Halfway through the second half, the question was no longer who would win but by how much.

No country has been able to win two World Cups in a row since Brazil did in 1962. Although a win against Australia is not enough to promise a victorious tournament, it is clear that France has arrived in Qatar with the spirit and squad to make history, without the doubts they showed in Korea-Japan or South Africa, where they failed at the time of revalidate your favorite status. Seeing the bench, the illusions are confirmed: if in the face of so many casualties those who remain in the substitution are Varane, Guendouzi, Saliba, Camavinga or Fofana, what is the dent? They could be starters in almost any team that disputes this tournament. Les Bleus, from the top of their group, have reason to smile in the desert.